I've been on this same journey through the Santa Fe institute pubs on this topic, which all started in a weird place because I wondered what kind of bizarre scientific research outfit had cormac McCarthy on staff as an artist in residence apart from the rest of the conspicuously multidisciplinary luminaries. What a unique, strange, and special intellectual atmosphere they must have had going in their prime and hopefully the best days are ahead still. It seems hard to compare to anything else.. one thinks of bell labs but probably only the peak of the Vienna circle comes close. We need more places with artists, philosophers, mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists rubbing shoulders in the halls.